


Buried

by weakinteraction



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-04 15:45:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18607576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/pseuds/weakinteraction
Summary: Rey has to return to Jakku.





	Buried

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lucymonster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/gifts).



Rey could divide her life into three phases: the largest part of it, spent on Jakku, the daily struggle to survive in its harsh environment and harsher society; the brief, tumultuous time that she spent trying to get back there, even as events coalesced around her into much greater patterns that she could never have even guessed existed before; and the time since Ahch To, when she had realised that there was nothing left for her on the planet she had grown up. Whether it was Luke Skywalker, Kylo Ren, or the Force itself that had made that clear to her, she didn't know. But nor did she need to. The realisation itself was what mattered.

And yet, here she was, back again amongst the endless sand. So which part of her life did this episode belong to? It was easy to feel as though she had never left. She had achieved, inadvertently, the goal that had driven her through the disasters. And yet, she still knew that there was nothing here for her any more.

Nothing here for her. But there was something that the First Order wanted, almost as badly as the star map, back when everything had first started.

Kylo Ren, now Supreme Leader by dint of his strength in the Force, but distrusted by most of the First Order's hierarchy, had become obsessed with tracking down ancient Dark Side artefacts, from the time of the Empire and much, much earlier.

Rey knew why, could feel it in the twisted dreams she had when her defences against the Force bond Snoke had forced upon them weakened in her sleep: he was scared to face her again, unless he had some overwhelming advantage.

Since their escape from Crait, the Resistance had fled to the Unknown Regions, making occasional strikes into First Order territory to keep hope alive, to fan the flame that could never go out so that it would one day become a blaze that would burn the corrupt regime to the ground. But for a small set of people, Rey included, a bizarre race had developed across the galaxy, hunting down ancient artefacts. And it had been the Resistance who had discovered that the Nihilus Singularity had been right under everyone's olfactory organs the whole time.

Jakku was a graveyard for everything that had been left of the Imperial Fleet after Endor, and not a few Rebel ships too, but everyone thought that the biggest prizes had been scavenged decades ago. Even when Rey had first begun to learn how to navigate her way through the hulk of a Star Destroyer, how to bring battered systems back to life just long enough to coax them into giving up their bounty, the glory days when the galaxy's most famous bounty hunters, treasure seekers and archaeologists had briefly visited Jakku were a distant memory, a source of stories to while away the cold desert nights.

But somehow one of the most powerful remnants of the ancient Sith had hidden here undetected all along. The evidence Black Squadron had found in an abandoned Imperial science station far from the main hyperspace routes was irrefutable: despite them having utterly failed to understand the Singularity, it had been pressed into service on the _Glorious Destiny_ in desperation as everything began to collapse. And the _Destiny_ was one of the many, many ships buried on Jakku.

This was going to be the scavenging job of a lifetime.

* * *

Rey sat cross-legged on the ground, and reached out with her mind, just as Luke had taught her.

But Jakku was nothing like Ahch To. There was an ecosystem, certainly, but it was sparse, its cycles of life and death attenuated almost to nothing.

What she was aware of, far more than ever before, was what had never been alive, and therefore could not die. The sand itself, the wrecks of the star destroyers -- ah, just there, a tiny bright pinprick in her perception was a scavenger deep inside one of them -- and below all that, the bedrock of the planet itself.

Apart from that, there was nothing.

No. Apart from that, there was _nothing_ \-- absolute nothing, a nothing that drew life towards it.

The device -- if it even was a device -- was buried deep, almost embedded in the bedrock. Somehow Rey felt as though it might have burrowed its way there, all those years ago after the battle, waiting to be found.

Waiting to be found by someone like her.

She could feel it whispering in her mind, in some incomprehensible lexicon.

It wanted someone like her. _Needed_ someone like her. It could make her great. She could make it great again, as it had been millennia ago.

_"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."_

She had watched Kylo Ren murder Han -- his own father and one of the tiny number of people up to that point who had ever shown Rey anything like real kindness. When he had said that, she had seen it as an absurd attempt at self-justification for such a monstrous crime. But as she felt the _thing_ under the sand, the words returned to her. He had not been entirely wrong -- some things really did need to be destroyed.

Even burial deep beneath the dunes was not enough. The fact that this artefact -- no, this presence -- had lain dormant so long was irrelevant. Now that it had detected a Force user, it would stop at nothing to become immanent in the world again. She couldn't help but wonder if the artefact had been aware of her, when she had lived here before. Even though she was literally on the other side of the planet to Niima Outpost, who knew how far its awareness stretched? But what if it had done more than know of her -- what if it had shaped her?

No. She had confronted the darkness inside herself in the cave on Ahch To. Confronted it, and accepted it for what it was. This darkness was different. This darkness hungered, a hunger that could never be satisfied, a hunger that had now been awakened.

It was clear to Rey now that the artefact could not be destroyed. But it could be put beyond _anyone's_ reach. The ancient Z-95 Headhunter she had come here in -- partly to stay unnoticed, but mostly because of how short the Resistance was on craft now -- was not the best craft for such a mission, but it would suffice.

First, though, she would have to put the weapon within her reach.

She pressed down hard into the yielding sand. And it yielded further, defying gravity, defying the electrostatic forces between its grains, defying every force except _the_ Force, as focused and worked through her. The sand grains drifted up into the air, more and more of them, until they formed a sandstorm larger than the planet had ever seen before, a maelstrom with Rey at its quiet heart, floating now in mid-air. And the ships came too, taking flight for the first time in three decades, whipped round in the storm like tiny insects.

Rey reached down further, tugged at the Nihilus Singularity. But it was coming to her willingly now, pulling itself free of the planet's geology. She let it taste the darkness within herself, just enough to tempt it further.

When it came, it was tiny, almost imperceptible, like a trick of the light, impossible to see properly.

Rey let the storm subside, the sand falling back in huge waves, reburying the ships she had uncovered in new configurations. The scavengers might find some new bounty, for once.

The scavengers. Guiltily, she reached out with her mind even as she reached out with her hand for the Singularity. The scavenger inside the star destroyer had survived, sustaining only minor injuries.

But the after effects of the storm she had created would echo around the planet for some time to come.

She stared at her palm. The way the light fell into the singularity made it look like she had a dark scar in the centre of it. But she could feel it in her mind too. It was disappointed in her.

It would be even more so when she flung it into the sun.


End file.
